


The Highest Form of Flattery

by HeatedHeadwear (SplickedyHat)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Beta Kids Are Older, Child Neglect, Drug Use, Dubiously Consensual Kissing, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gen, High School Models AU, M/M, Manipulation, Mentions of alcoholism, mentions of divorce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 07:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2459573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplickedyHat/pseuds/HeatedHeadwear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk’s only ever seen photos of Jake English before.  He thought the boy was mildly attractive--model material, sure, but nothing special.  No alluring mystique, but enough enthusiasm to make up for it on an amateur level.<br/>In real life, he is perfect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Highest Form of Flattery

**Author's Note:**

> Really, this is the same plot I keep obsessively coming back to, which is: character is a bit of an ass and screws up terribly, then has to deal with it.  
> I wrote a story about Dirk and his issues a while ago; it's been deleted since for a variety of reasons, including shoddy characterization, totally BS'd psychological talk, and the general lack of a unified plot. I still don't think I have him completely down--slight changes had to be made to him and some of the other characters to make the story work in the setting. Jake, for instance, had to be slightly more gullible than he was in canon in order for him to agree to the kiss without the pressure of saving his friend's lives. We don't see much of Dirk's emotional responses to these events in Homestuck proper because he's so cagey about stuff, so I had to sort of feel my way along with that until I got to the rooftop scene, which is faithful enough to his final confrontation with Hal in the comic.  
> Rambling and caveats done with, I hope you dig the story.

Last period is Algebra.

Hal Strider isn’t listening.

His thumbs slide deftly over the screen of his tablet phone, guiding pixellated turret units into place to repel some slowly-spreading invasion.  There’s a notebook on his desk next to his open textbook, but it seems that rather than taking notes he’s finished tomorrow’s homework assignment.  The teacher doesn’t even glance at him, despite the fact that Hal’s neglected to turn off the sound effects on his game.  The girl in front of him is tapping one finger hard on her desk, her round brown face hardened in a way that suggests she’s prepared to do the teacher’s job for him.

The instant the bell rings, Hal slides his books deftly into his backpack, slings it over one shoulder, and is halfway to the door before anyone else has even turned in their seats.  Behind him, the girl hurries to put her own things away, her scowl deepening.

She catches up with him at his locker, where he’s still playing his game.  His apparent level of absorption with it would suggest an obliviousness to the outside world, but when she draws near he addresses her without looking up.

“Jane, come on, you don’t think it’s even slightly funny?”

She huffs a little, tucking herself into the unoccupied space next to his locker.  “You know I like a good joke as much as the next person--probably even more!--but I don’t think that’s why you like distracting everyone in the class.”

“No?”  He smirks, the ruddy sprinkle of freckles near his eyes wrinkling.  “Have you ever heard for a running gag?”

“If it’s a running gag you have run it into the ground, mister!  I think you’re showing off, just like your big brother.”

He pauses for a fraction of a second, his smile widening slightly.  “Well, we are both mathematical prodigies.”

“Hal.”

“Miss Crocker?”

She pauses, then sighs, deflating somewhat.  “...Don’t you and your silly brother have somewhere to be?”

“Not yet,” he says, and then he starts and stares at her, mouth slightly open.  “--Oh!  I never showed you the shots from last week!  Here--”  

Jane has to move around to the other side of the locker as a freshman nudges past her to get into the one adjacent to Hal’s.  Hal finishes digging in his backpack, shuts the metal door blocking his view of Jane, and hands her a large yellow envelope.

“Check it out, sister.”

The pictures are of a young white man in various outfits, posing on what looks like a massive maroon velvet throne.  In all of them he’s utterly deadpan, thin-faced and thin-lipped and almost identical to Hal save for the absence of freckles and the fact that his hair is white-blonde instead of red.  Not exactly stereotypical modeling material, but there’s something appealing about the austere angles of his face and the blade of his nose.

“It’s funny to see  him wearing so many layers,” Jane observes.  “He’s usually so…”

“Ascetic?” says a voice behind her.  “Scantily-clad?”

“...unfashionable,” Jane finishes without blinking, but she’s smiling when she turns around to look at Dirk Strider.  He stares at her over his shades, eyebrows quirking in ironic genuine pain.

“I’m wounded.  Not only by the slur against my fashion sense but also by the implication that layers equal fashion.  I think there’s a big percents chance you’re just using some false logic in an attempt to hurt my feelings.  And it’s working.”

“Oh, don’t give me that!  You know I have to keep you humble or no one else will!”

“Roxy gives it her best shot on a regular basis,” he points out.

“Roxy doesn’t go to school with you,” Jane counters, giving him a business-like pat on the shoulder.  “No more arguing!  Go be your skinny, moderately-handsome self and try to stay out of trouble.  If that isn’t a complete oxymoron, anyway!”

“You’re a slavedriver, Crocker.”

“Shoo!”

\--

It has been suggested time and time again that Hal Strider step out from behind the camera and model with his older brother, and with good reason.  They make an engaging visual contrast just walking down the school hallway together.  Hal’s a year younger but only an inch or two shorter, almost identical to Dirk but with a slightly differing color scheme.  Dirk’s hair is white-blonde; Hal’s is styled the same but dyed a fiery red.  Dirk wears pointy black anime shades; Hal wears a pair of the same shades but with red-tinted glass.  

Fortunately, though, that’s as far outside the school dress code as either of them are willing to go. Jane was right in saying it was uncommon to see them in any kind of complex ensemble.  Beyond a button-up (unbuttoned) to cover their bare shoulders, both Striders seem to prefer black tanktops and gray jeans.  Shortly after starting his modeling side job, Dirk picked up the habit of wearing fingerless gloves and Hal now wears them too...in red, of course.

There’s no doubt that Dirk has to have noticed this behavior, but he’s never mentioned it once.

Once they’re in the car (Dirk drives, of course--Hal doesn’t have his license yet) Dirk says, “Isn’t this the day that new kid is supposed to come shoot with us?  The one the agent called ‘a heartthrob’?”

“You mean you don’t remember?”  
Dirk rolls his eyes.  “Of course I remember.  My question was entirely ironic.”  
“As was my answer.”

“As was this whole exchange, as we both know.”

“Of course.”

“Alright then.  Do we know anything else about him yet?”

“Besides the portfolio she sent us last week, no.  But I think you’ll look good together.”

Dirk grunts, not prepared to agree just yet.  He’s only ever seen photos of Jake English before.  He thought the boy was mildly attractive--model material, sure, but nothing special.  No alluring mystique, but enough enthusiasm to make up for it on an amateur level.  

In real life, he is perfect.  

Dirk stares unabashedly, knowing his shades will hide the movement of his eyes.  Where Dirk is broad and rangy, Jake is slender and rounded.  His nose is broad, his lips full, the angles of his cheekbones pleasing.  His hair has been carefully tousled by some stylist so that a shock of it curls rakishly over one side of his forehead.  When he lowers his tinted, square-rimmed glasses, his green eyes radiate curiosity and interest.

Dirk stifles the intense surge of desire that rises at the sudden eye contact.  He wouldn’t call it anything as naive as “love at first sight”, not when he’s experienced it so many times in the past.  Every time it’s the same: the feelings blindside him, abrupt and overwhelming, and he acts on them with the same obsessive dedication he puts into everything he does.  He’s faintly aware of Hal watching him as he offers his hand to the new boy.  Jake’s grip is firmer than expected, and Dirk is surprised to find his fingertips brushing calluses as their hands part.  Where did he get those?

“You must be Jake English,” he says, knowing Hal can hear him deepening his voice.  He shifts so that his brother is behind him, less of a distraction.

“That’s right!”  The accent is somewhere between English and...what is that, Indian?  He’ll ask later--there’s a decent chance that bringing it up now is rude.  Probably.  “I look forward to working with you, Dirk!”

“Oh...yes, me too,” says Dirk automatically.  “This is your first time doing something like this, huh?”

“Well, yes!  It’s awfully exciting, but there’s so much to know...like, what to wear before I even get here and what to bring with me and--you know, they told me to come ‘clean-faced’!  I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean but I thought it was only polite to be, you know, clean all over.  Since I’ll be wearing someone else’s clothes and all.”

“Well, you’re not wrong,” says Dirk.  “But they also want your face clean so they can put makeup on you.”

He has to hand it to Jake--he’s met a couple of guys who’ve stepped out away from a great modeling opportunity because they didn’t want to wear blush.  Jake just looks intrigued, possibly even excited.

“Wow, really?  I hadn’t any idea that kind of thing went on in the industry!  I really have so much to learn.”

“I’m sure my brother would be more than willing to tell you everything he knows,” says Hal, without so much as a trace of sarcasm.  Dirk’s sure Jake wouldn’t notice even the least subtle hint of his displeasure with his brother, but surreptitious kicks to the ankle aren’t really Strider style.  He rolls one shoulder and cocks his head in Hal’s direction, getting an unrepentant “hm” in return.

Little bastard.

“That,” says Jake, oblivious to the unspoken exchange, “would be stellar!”

“Well then, why don’t we get started?”  Dirk puts a guiding hand on his shoulder, eyes focused on Jake’s face, ready to turn it into a friendly pat if necessary.  

Jake glances down, gives him a blinding grin, and says, “Lead the way, then!”

Dirk swallows hard, forces himself not to tighten his grip, and guides Jake towards Studio 5.

\--

“Alright, little brother, tilt your head back so I can bishify you.”

Dirk will never be entirely sure how he ended up with Rose Lalonde doing his makeup.  She, Dave, and Roxy ended up with Mom when the divorce finally went through, leaving Dirk and Hal with a man whose title should by all rights should have been Dad but whom all of them referred to as Bro.

Sometimes Dirk thinks he would have preferred to stay with their coddling alcoholic of a mother rather than their distant, inscrutable father (if it weren’t for certain...mitigating factors).  He still can’t believe they managed to produce four kids before it all went down, let alone that Dave and Rose grew up well-adjusted enough to make it to their colleges of choice.  The makeup job is just something on the side for Rose, who’s double-majoring in English and Psychology.

For Dirk, the modeling thing is still mostly ironic, although he’s reached the point where he’s started to mean it.  The fact that his twenty-two-year-old sister somehow ended up being the one applying his foundation et. cetera before every shoot only adds to it.

Still, it’s kind of weird.

“Do you want to know how Dave is doing?” she asks, and Dirk contrives to decline without moving his head or lips--she’s meticulously applying something glossy and powder pink to the line of his mouth--”so you don’t look so much like a skull,” she said.

“He worries about you, you know.  Smack your lips, please.”

Dirk sucks his lips in and lets whatever she put on them spread a little.  When he relaxes his mouth again, it looks marginally fuller and rosier.

“Tell him not to,” he says.  “Am I the prettiest princess yet, Rose?”

“Oh, not just yet.  Hold still for your mascara, child.  I would have thought a boy who likes boys as much as you do would feel he had rather less elbow room for judgmental behavior.  You can’t tell me you’re really still embarrassed to be wearing makeup, you wore a dress for that runway gig a month ago.”

“Of course not.  You know me better than that.”

“Then stop making princess jokes,” she says coolly, “or I’ll give you my patented goth-nerd aesthetic next time.  Although...who knows, you might look good in purple eyeliner and black lipstick.”

“If it means you’ll stop mentioning Dave to me…” he starts, trailing off as she sighs with exasperation.

“He didn’t abandon you, Dirk.  He wanted you to live with us, but you--”

“No.”

“Dirk Strider, you are a stubborn ass.”

“So are you.”

“So is this whole broken family,” she says, and draws back, patting Dirk’s carefully-sculpted hair.  “There, you’ve been sufficiently beautified.  Go sell your body to the masses, I suppose.”

“Thank you, I will.”

The shoot goes as well as can be expected with an inexperienced kid like Jake in the mix.  Hal isn’t old enough to be hired by any big designer companies, but he has a good portfolio and the confident bearing that’s been trained into him from birth, and lately local customers have started gravitating to his work.  Sometimes he works with other models, but more often than not his customers are willing to put their clothes on Dirk and watch the magic happen.  

Jake isn’t quite a part of the magic yet, but there are upsides to that.  Dirk keeps his new partner from making some beginner’s mistakes with a few well-placed mutters, and the grateful expression on Jake’s face makes his heart burn with a fierce satisfaction.  During water break, pushing away the nagging thoughts that he’s repeating what Hal said earlier, Dirk tells Jake in confidence that he’ll be more than willing to advise and look out for him.  The profuse thanks and energetic assertions that he’s “just a really stand-up fellow” only increase the intensity of Dirk’s fascination.  They exchange numbers.

And then it’s over, with promises of another shoot for Jake and plenty of praise for how good they look together.

Hal repeats the sentiment later when they’re driving home, with only the barest hint of suggestiveness in his voice.  But for Striders, a little hint is a passive-aggressive shout and Dirk tightens his hands on the wheel, eyes fixed on the road.

“You look good together.”

Dirk says nothing.

“You like him.”  

Not even a question.  Was it that obvious?  Of course it was obvious to Hal, Hal knows him better than anyone.  Hal’s too much like him not to notice.  But there’s something disturbing about hearing it come from a face that’s essentially a mirror of his.

Dirk says nothing.

“You got plans to hook up?”  

Of fucking course he does.

Dirk says nothing.  
“I could help,” says Hal.  His tone is casual, but it sends alarm bells echoing through Dirk’s skull.

“No,” he says.

“Is it so bad that I want my big bro to get together with his boycrush?”

“Just ‘crush’,” Dirk grinds out between closed teeth.  “And yes it is, if you think it’s your job to make it happen.  You’re not me, it’s none of your business.  Normal little brothers are supposed to be disgusted thinking about that kind of thing.”

“We’re not normal, Dirk.”

Dirk massages one temple, keeping his eyes fixed on the road.  “...Damn straight we’re not.”

\--

The day after, Dirk texts Jake to ask whether he wants to get something to eat.  Then, re-evaluating how eager this is likely to make him seem, he sends the addendum: With me and some of my friends from school.

Jane is hard to convince, Roxy less so.  Jane is worried about her homework, her Skype plans with her brother John (who went on a road trip as a traveling comedian rather than attending college), and though she doesn’t say it aloud, her weight.  Dirk improvises some reassurances, a vague timeframe that won’t interfere with her nine o’clock call, and promises her “any place you want”.  

With Roxy, all he needs to say is, “Hey Rox, have dinner with us.”  She’ll take any excuse to get out of the house and drive to another county.

With a little more organizing (or string-pulling, as he likes to think of it), everyone knows where to be and when.  Hal will be walking home today--probably in a bit of a huff at being excluded from Dirk’s friend group.

“Does he have any friends?” Jane asks upon hearing this.  “Maybe you ought to let him  spend a little time with us!  What harm could it do?”

“In answer to your first question, no.  And to your second, more than you think.  Trust me.”

She squints at him, supremely skeptical as ever, and he can’t help chuckling a little under his breath.

“He’ll work it out, Jane.  I did.”

“Hmmm…”

Looking around for something to change the subject with, Dirk finds the perfect distraction in Jake, waving at them from across the street.  He taps Jane on the shoulder and points, then waves back.  Jake, he observes, looks good in shorts.

“That’s...Jake?”

“The one and only,” Dirk replies.

“He’s...very good-looking, isn’t he?” says Jane, sounding unusually breathless.  Something clenches up in Dirk’s chest and he glances sharply down at her face.

“I guess so,” he says, utterly noncommittal.  He’s always had the impression that Jane can tell when he’s being intentionally deadpan to hide something, but as long as she doesn’t know what exactly that something is, he can play dumb infinitely.

The light turns red and Jake starts to make his way across the street, encountering danger only when a neon pink moped almost runs him down as he approaches the curb.  He stumbles back as its owner brings her vehicle to a halt in one of the roadside parking spaces and tugs the sticker-encrusted helmet from her head.

“Dirk!  Haaayyyyy!”

No one can pronounce the vowel sound of “hey” as an A like Roxy.  Dirk catches his half-sister as she careens into him, thanking his good reflexes for the foot extended back behind him to brace for impact.  She squeezes him just a little longer than is really comfortable, but ducks away the second before he opens his mouth to protest and wraps herself around Jane instead.

Jane, Roxy, and Dirk had attended the same middle school in the years before the divorce, but the Lalonde family house is a county over so Dave and Rose finished their last year of high school in a new town.

Yet another reason why Dirk doesn’t understand their decision to leave.

Jake approaches cautiously, casting a nervous glance from Roxy to her moped.  “Uh...hello, Dirk!  Who are these lovely ladies?”

“I’ll let them introduce themselves,” says Dirk, but his stomach twists a little watching Jake give Jane and Roxy each a cordial handshake.  He and Jane are alike enough with their funny ways of talking and it’s not as though he knows yet whether Jake’s even into guys...

Over the course of dinner Dirk can’t seem to find a subtle way to bring up the subject of sexuality--if there is a subtle way to do so, which there may not be.  Still, it’s fun to have the gang together again and Jake is a big hit with Roxy and Jane, though Dirk thinks Roxy must have noticed the way both he and Jane are focused so intently on their new friend.  By the time dinner is over, she looks worried and just a little bit sulky.  Dirk can’t help feeling a little sorry for her--after all, almost every romantic conquest she’s initiated in the past couple years has gone badly.

He really shouldn’t feel guilty about telling his half-sister not to flirt with him, but she does deserve someone.

The problem is, that someone can’t be Jake.  And she knows it, poor girl.  Roxy is a people-pleaser to the core and angling for a relationship with the boy her two best friends are crushing on is well beyond her emotional limits.  Dirk buys her a coffee at the end of the day and hopes she gets the message.

He thinks later that at least he’ll probably get there first.  His decisive, forward personality is at least an advantage in that way.  Knowing her, it’s highly unlikely Jane will act on her feelings before he does.  All he really has to do is make a plan, drop some truly massive hints that even the oblivious Mister English can’t miss out on, and probably put it into action during one of their photo shoots.

\--No, scratch that, Hal will be there.  Best to keep it private.  

\--

Hal actually manages to behave himself for the most part during the next shoot, which lets Dirk relax a little.  Maybe he’s let it go.  Maybe he’s decided it’s up to his big brother to actually deal with his own romantic entanglements.

Another friendly outing later (Jane blushes and laughs self-consciously the whole time and Roxy looks nervous), he’s decides it’s about time he did something.  It’s a Friday, so he stays up late that night playing some some online fantasy game--his brain does the planning for his next private encounter with Jake while his hands take care of severely fucking over the enemy team.

It’s only around two in the morning that he realizes he has another shoot tomorrow at seven.

In the morning, Dirk staggers into the studio looking like hell.

Jake’s already there and dressed--looking like an Indiana Jones whose clothes have been subtly altered to look more like evening dress--when Dirk arrives in sweatpants and a tanktop, gulping coffee between monosyllabic responses to a severely vexed Rose Lalonde.  He issues a hasty apology to Jake, who shrugs, looking concerned, and then lets himself be bustled back to get dressed and groomed.

Dirk emerges from the dressing room half an hour later looking pale and sleek and hardly tired at all with foundation and powder covering the shadows under his eyes.  

The shirt is white and high-collared, but the designer--apparently of the opinion that the outfit needed a little more color--tied a scarlet ribbon around his throat over the collar, the tails of the little red bow hanging down over his collarbones like drips of blood

“Looks like someone slit my throat,” he deadpans to Jake, drawing a bony finger along his neck.  “Cut along the frilly red line, right?”

Jake laughs nervously, and Dirk instantly readjusts his assessment of the kind of humor available to him.  No more morbid shit.

They pose as instructed, the woman who designed today’s outfits discussing with Hal on the other side of the umbrella kit and all the lights.  There’s a great rubbery fake outcrop of rock on the set with plenty of convenient flat footholds to stand on, but for some reason most of the prompts from Hal and the lady have the models sprawling expressively on the prop in varying degrees of dishabille.

By the time the session is over and Hal is discussing the final products with the customer, Dirk’s back is aching and the white shirt has been hiked up above his belly button from shifting his contorted body all over the fucking plastic rocks.

“I’m pretty sure I’m going to have bruises tomorrow,” he grumbles to Jake, who manages a tired chuckle.  He picked up after the first day that it was a more physically intense job than anyone might expect, but today was especially tough.  Dirk, who had an eye on him during breaktime, is aware that he finished his water bottle and is just opening his mouth to offer Jake his own bottle when Hal reappears.

“Alright, guys, just another fifteen minutes.”

“But the designer lady already left!” says Jake, looking confused.  Dirk is staring at Hal, trying like hell to spot his game.  He can’t tell for sure when his little brother is lying, but he can guess.

“She said I could take a few last pictures, and I could send her any I thought were worth publishing.  She’ll pay extra for anything she likes and it’s only fifteen minutes, so why not?”

Damn, he wouldn’t lie about something like that...it’d be too easily disproven.  Doesn’t mean he isn’t up to something, though…

Reluctantly, Dirk stands up.  After a moment, Jake follows suit with a barely-audible sigh.

“I’ll treat you to lunch after this,” says Dirk, his eyes taking in Jake’s grimace and drooping eyelids.  “You deserve a break, man.”

“Alright, Jake, put an arm around Dirk’s waist for me.  Adventure movie poster style, you know?  Yeah, that’s good.  Now look at each other.  More intensity.  Good.”

The camera flashes a few times.  Dirk’s heart is pounding and a muscle in his hip keeps twitching, right below where Jake’s hand is wrapped comfortably around his waist.  He’s being pretty familiar there, shit…

Hal gives the distinct impression of slowly testing limits, and while the gears in Dirk’s brain grind and spin and his hands sweat, Jake hardly seems to notice.  Even when they’re practically nose to nose, Jake’s hands on his face, he doesn’t show any serious sign of discomfort.

Dirk, meanwhile, is trying not to think too hard about the calluses on the hands on his jawline.  It takes him a moment to comprehend Hal’s next direction.

“Now kiss.”

Jake’s hands drop away instantly.  “What?”

Fucking hell, thinks Dirk, but he’s frozen where he is, mouth tightly shut, staring at Jake’s confused face.

“You heard me, now come on.  The customer said she wanted to try and get it in there, but we didn’t have time.  This is a great time for it.”

Liar.

“You can’t expect me to believe this is common practice, old boy!  I’ve never seen clothes models in the magazines locking lips!”

“Plenty of professionals are able to handle stuff like that coolly and rationally, but it’s true the big magazines are too homophobic to publish it.”

Lies and fallacies.

And he falls for it.

“Well, never let it be said I share such a deplorable quality with them, but I’m still not sure I’m comfortable with it!”

“That’s not at all up to your usual standard.  Time is money, Jake.  Now, how about that smooch?”

Jake looks flustered.  Dirk’s gut churns in time with his heartbeat because he can’t believe how attracted he is to Jake in this moment, this specific moment.  What’s wrong with him what’s wrong with him what the fuck is Hal doing?  God, this is so screwed up.

He says nothing.

“You’re a very pushy photographer,” Jake mutters..

“That doesn’t sound like the adventurer you’re supposed to be here, man.  Are you pussying out on me, Jake?”

“What?  No, I--I love adventure, come on!”

It’s incredible, how easy he’s making this.  Dirk can barely breathe.

“I’m not sure I believe that at the moment, to be honest.”

“Alright!” snaps Jake, and steps back up on the fake rocks with an expression of flustered determination on his face.  Dirk raises his hands weakly for a moment, trying to fight the design Hal obviously has in mind...and then, fuck it, what can he even do about it by now?

And then Jake’s hands are on his face again and they’re kissing.

It’s kind of awkward and hot (and not in a sexy way) but it’s definitely a kiss and it’s definitely from Jake and it might not be the way he imagined it but…

The camera flashes.  Jake withdraws, still looking flustered and now slightly dazed.

“Alright, done,” says Hal flatly.  “Great job, everybody.  Give yourselves a pat on the ass.  I mean back, oops, what an embarrassing mistake.”

“Hi,” says Dirk, and then realizes what he just said and tries again.  “Uh, do you want...to go out with me?”

“Oh,” says Jake.  “No, I can’t.”

Dirk keeps his face paper-smooth.  “Well, why not?”

“I never got to answer you earlier but you see, I have a lot of homework to do this weekend so I can’t eat out!”  Jake smiles a little uncertainly.  “...Maybe next week?”

“Sounds fine,” says Dirk, trying to sound cool and not too relieved.  “Chipotle, then?  I know a good one in town.”

“Alright!”

“Alright.”

He keeps up his faint, fond smile up until Jake’s left the room, and even manages to keep his cool until he’s outside on the sidewalk in the setting sun, and he can see Hal’s smirk.  Not looking at his little brother, he growls, “What the fuck were you thinking?”

Hal stares bemusedly up at him, and not for the first time Dirk finds himself loathing the red contacts he wears, so reminiscent of Dave’s eyes.

“Are you telling me this isn’t what you wanted?”

“I wanted to do it my way!” Dirk snaps, unlocking the car and sliding into the driver’s seat.  He slams the door after him, glaring up at his little brother.

“Like it wouldn’t essentially be my way but slower,” says Hal, examining his his nails in a way that, at this particular moment, totally infuriates Dirk.

“Walk home,” he says.

“What?”

“It’s only a couple blocks away.  It’ll keep you on your toes.”

“Oh, come the fuck on, Dirk.”

“Get some exercise,” snaps Dirk, then puts up the window and steps on it.

The drive home isn’t as calming as he expected it to be.  Moving on autopilot, he tries and fails to sort his thoughts into their usual neat little rows.  In the end, unwilling to explore the depths of the disturbance in his mind, he shoves the amorphous worries back into a dark corner and firmly dismisses them with the thought that this is technically a happy ending...or even a happy beginning.

At least we’re together now.  That was the endgame, after all.  No more drama, everything should be fine.

\--

He shares the news on Monday morning, first with Roxy via text and then with Jane by casually mentioning that he has a date with Jake this Wednesday.

“You’re...dating?” says Jane, a little pink in the face.  “Why, that’s...that’s wonderful.  I’m happy for you.  Um...how long?”

“Since a couple days ago.  Are you alright?”

A small part of him feels like a heel for asking that, for testing her to see if she’ll admit her feelings.  Of course she won’t.  It’s not like there would even be a point to it now.

He doesn’t mind her absence at the lunch table that day.  Not that it isn’t regrettable, but she needs her space.  It’s only when he sees her sitting next to Hal on the other side of the cafeteria that he feels an odd flare of resentment.

It’s his fault I’m dating your crush, he thinks, staring up at them under his shades.

No, shut up, that’s not important.

He can’t have my friends too.

God, what does that even mean?  Dirk lowers his eyes to his lunch, forcing himself back into a state of rationality.  Jane will be fine, Hal isn’t trying to steal anything from him, and he would eventually have ended up with Jake anyway.  How it happened isn’t relevant.

\--

The first date is...interesting.

They go skating.  Dirk hasn’t skated in years, and especially not at the tame little local rink, but he still has the red skates with the flame patterns on them and he shares an old green pair with Jake.  Jake isn’t sure about using in-lines, but after a little prodding he seems to decide that it’s just as Dirk says and he’ll only learn to do something like this if he leaves his comfort zone a little.

Then they go for food.  Conversation isn’t Dirk’s strong point, but he manages to stumble through the hour or so they spend at Chipotle by bluntly testing a variety of different subjects until he runs up against one Jake seems willing to talk about--or at least listen to.

Still, by the end, Dirk isn’t sure he got everything quite right so he calls Jake again that night to ask if they can go out again.  Jake wants to know if they can hang out with Jane and Roxy again, but the resulting visit is entirely too strange.  In the firm belief that he shouldn’t have to downplay his relationship with Jake for anyone’s comfort, Dirk takes several opportunities to emphasize it.  The others--including Jake--seem set on doing their best to ignore this.

So that one doesn’t end as well as it could either.

Dirk wouldn’t say he develops an obsession with having a “perfect” date, but there are a lot of things Dirk wouldn’t say.  Even when they’re modeling together--less often recently now that the customers who were interested in paired models have gotten their photos--he’s constantly trying to keep it his idea of an ideal experience.  

That is, while simultaneously trying to cut Hal out of as many interactions with Jake as possible.  Jake seems more and more tired these days, after all.  The less stress he has to deal with, the better.

\--

Recently, Jake’s been turning down invitations to go out.  In an attempt to calm the uneasiness in his gut, Dirk sends text after text to his boyfriend’s number.  

TT: Dude, are you going to do any more shoots?

GT: Well, I’m not sure.  after all, it’s not exactly the job of my dreams!

TT: Well, okay.  But if we’re not going to meet there we should set up somewhere else to see each other regularly.

TT: What do you think of hanging out at the mall?  I hear that’s what normal kids do when they want to be around other kids.

GT: Sounds fine! but maybe…

TT: Yeah?

GT: Maybe we could take a break from all that this weekend!  it’s been a terribly tiring week and well, I guess I need some time to get a little shuteye!

TT: I understand.  Maybe you could just call me tomorrow, to let me know how everything’s going.

GT:  Oh!  yeah, sure.  later!

And then he’s offline, and Dirk is left with the cold feeling in his stomach, only intensified by Jake’s failure to reassure him.

\--

He stops replying to everyone else’s messages too.  It’s not until Roxy finally calls him directly that he decides to answer the phone.

“Dirk, Janey’s been tryin’ to get in touch with you for like a whole month now!”

“I don’t know why you felt the need to intervene on her behalf.  She could just talk to me at school if she’s pissed with me for some reason,” says Dirk blandly, lowering his phone from his ear for a moment to check the status of his Pester app.  Still no reply from Jake.  

He raises the phone again in time to catch the tail of Roxy’s reply--”--and you’ve been spendin’ all your time with Jake, which is fine but you could also think about your friends sometime, ya know?”

Dirk feels the familiar spike of annoyance at being told how to behave, and by now he’s too frustrated to keep his poker face.  “We tried that a couple of times.” (True.) “I wasn’t the one who made those visits awkward.” (Could be the truth.)

“Dirk.  Dirk.  You’re not addressing the problem here, hon!  Were you even listening?”

“Of course I was,” he says, blank and stony once more.  Then he hangs up.

\--

Things are out of control.  

Dirk’s starting to doubt they were ever in control, and for almost the first time in his life, he doesn’t trust himself to fix it.

TT: Rose.

TT: Rose, I need to talk to you about Jake.

TT: Call Dave.

TT: Why in the name of fuck

She’s logged off already.  Dirk makes a little coughing noise in the back of his throat and the hand holding the phone twitches.  His body is telling him to scream and throw the phone at the wall.

Instead, he tucks it in his back pocket and climbs the stairs to the roof.  He hasn’t been up here since before the divorce, back when sparring on the roof was a daily thing.  Sometimes he thinks Mom said something to Bro before she left, because after that there was no combat in the mornings before school.

The air’s getting colder.  Four storeys below, the headlights of late-night travelers crawl along the dark street.

He has Dave’s phone number already, thanks to Rose.  She asked to borrow his phone once and when he got it back there it was.  Not hard to spot, on a list of about five contacts.  He’d wanted to delete it then, but he remembers vaguely thinking something about “emotional irony” and letting it sit.

He thinks now if he’d wanted to fool himself, he should have at least renamed Dave as Hella Jeff or something.

He takes a deep breath, his finger hovering over the button labeled “Dave Strider”.  Jesus, it’s been fucking years since they even saw each other.  This is going to be weird.

Staring up at the purple evening sky, Dirk lets his finger brush the screen and slowly sits back, putting the phone to his ear.

“Sup, who is you?”

Dirk doesn’t spend time thinking about what to say; if he ever did that, he’d probably have developed social anxiety at a young age over how incredibly awkward he is.

“This is Dirk.  I think I fucked something up big-time and I need you to confirm or deny that.”

There’s a long, long moment of silence.  On the other end of the line, some muffled music goes into a wicked bass drop.

“The fact that you’re calling me to discuss even the possibility of you fucking up points to a great big shiny yes.  Are you even talking about the time you fucked things up with me or are we just going to pretend that never happened?”

“How about the second thing,” says Dirk dully, and almost winces at the disbelieving humorless chuckle from the other end.

“Seriously?  Jesus.”

“...Later, then.  I might even apologize.  I’m totally serious, but right now I need you to hear me out, alright?  Please.”

“Whoa, Dirk, you can’t go around saying shit like that or I’m gonna start doubting it’s even you calling.”

“That’s very supportive of you, Bro.”

“Don’t call me that.”

Dirk blinks.  “What?  You call everyone ‘Bro’, I’ve read your interviews in that shitty rag of a magazine.”  
“I’m touched that you’ve read my interviews, but I don’t want you calling me that.  You wouldn’t get it, you two always got along just fine…”

Dirk can’t deny that this sparks his interest.  “What does that mean?  You didn’t get along with Bro?”

“Tell you what,” says Dave wearily, “why don’t we hash out my daddy issues--and your apology--later and you tell me about whatever you fucked up now?”

“...Deal.”

He gets all the way through the explanation of the modeling job and meeting Jake when Dave pulls him up short.

“...and the moment I saw him I wanted to go out with him--”

“Seriously?”

“What?”

“That’s what you thought, ‘I want to go out with that dude’?  I fuckin’ doubt it, I know how you get when you want something.  I saw you in fifth-grade chess club, man.”

“So I...wanted him, fine.  Why is it so important?”

“Man, if there’s anything I’ve learned since they split up, it’s that irony is overrated and us Striders?  We change a lot of words and shit so we can lie to ourselves about what’s happening.”

Dirk tries to ignore the unbidden sinking feeling in his stomach that accompanies these words, but by now his emotional control is almost completely wrecked.  He scoffs into the phone while his left hand clenches and unclenches on the cloth of his jeans.  “Are you telling me I’m not...completely...objective?”

“You think you are?”

“Yes,” says Dirk.

“See, a big red WRONG buzzer just went off.  It’s all pulsing and beeping and shit like a giant sign of incorrectness in the sky. You just think your opinions are objective.  Now just tell me what happened, alright?”

It gets harder to finish the story after that, second-guessing everything he says.  Dave only stops him a few more times to make him change “Hal manipulated him” to “I let it happen”, and “tried to contact him regularly” to “texted him every hour on the hour”.

“The more I talk the worse it sounds,” says Dirk, failing completely to keep his voice from trembling.

“That’s because you really did fuck up big-time,” says Dave bluntly, and then suddenly sighs in a rustle of static.  “--Okay, that might have been kind of rude.”

“Kind of,” Dirk mutters.

“Good news is, though, now you know it.  Changing is hard as hell but hey, you’ve miraculously managed step one.  Shake yourself by the hand, kid.  Say congratulations a bunch of times and give yourself a big shiny medal engraved with ‘Just Realized I’ve Been a Total Fucking Asshole’.”

“Ugh,” says Dirk.

“Alright, you want real talk?  Apologize.  Break up with the guy.  Don’t get him to break up with you, even though you and me both know it’d be super fucking easy at this point.  You gotta trust me when I say it’s totally possible to be friends with an ex if you do it right.”

“What if I...don’t?  What if I can’t fix it?”

“Can’t say, man.  But if you need someone to talk to...Rose is always there.  You’ve probably noticed by now I’m not exactly an interpersonal relations ninja.  If you need someone to act like nothing’s wrong with you or sit in radio silence with for like an hour, I’m your dude.”

“Should I take that to mean the offer to discuss apologies and daddy issues is off?”

“Hey, fuck you man, I’m still working on that stuff too.  Just sayin’ that is pretty good for me.”

“Give yourself a medal,” says Dirk. “It should say something like ‘Admitted to Having Emotions Without Immediately Backpedaling’.”

“Yeah, I will.  After I do my next set, which starts--in ten minutes?  Oh, fuck.  Fuuuuuck.  Later, man.”

“Later,” says Dirk, just as the connection cuts out.

He only has a moment of nighttime silence before a voice behind him says, “You’re breaking up with him?”

Dirk stands slowly up, leaning for a moment on the brick wall between him and open air.  Then he turns around.

There’s more emotion on Hal’s face than Dirk can remember seeing since the kid was about five, and whatever he’s been keeping in seems to have gotten all mixed up when he let it out.  Dirk can’t read it at all--whether it’s betrayal or anger or confusion or all of them or something different, he has no idea.  Something hot and sick rises in his stomach at the sight.  Why does he care so much?  What has he been getting out of this?

“Hal--”

“You wanted it to happen, didn’t you?  Don’t tell me you didn’t, Dirk, don’t even fucking try to tell me you weren’t happy.  You kissed him.  You dated him.  I know what you’re like.  I’m like you, Dirk, I’m--”

“Don’t do that!” Dirk shouts, overcome suddenly by fury.  “Stop saying that!  Why do you have to throw all my flaws in my face?  Why do you act like it’s okay for you to act the way I do?  The puppetmaster shtick, the possessiveness, the fucking superiority complex!  What made you think those were the best qualities for a role model?”

“You never said--”

“I’m fucking sick of--of myself, alright?”  And he is, fuck it, he really is, and talking to Dave only made him admit it.  “And you’re trying to be me for whatever godforsaken fucking reason.  I don’t understand, Hal, but from now on you’ve got to stop.  All of this--” he violently ruffles the red spikes of Hal’s hair, grabbing the spiky red glasses as Hal struggles to free himself.

“Dirk, holy--what the fuck are you doing?  Get off!”

“The hair has to go!  The fucking glasses!”  Dirk tears off his own shades and throws both pairs on the ground, driving his heel into one and then the other.  Glass crackles under his foot, and rather than making him feel better it fuels his anger somehow.

“Dirk, you’re being irrational.  You’ve got to--”

“Can you name one thing about yourself you didn’t borrow from me?”

And then he blinks and everything’s gone cold and he’s looking at a frightened kid’s face, white under the freckles.  The youngest kid in a fucked-up family, trying to get along in a household where the only people to look up to are a father who’s almost permanently absent and never buys groceries and a brother who…

Dirk breathes out slowly.

“I like horses,” Hal blurts out.

“What?”

“That’s...one thing.  That’s different about me.”

Dirk’s about to open his mouth to say that’s not enough, he likes horses too, but then he remembers what Dave said about words.

“...You mean that?”

“Unironically,” Hal mumbles, and looking into his eyes Dirk sees for the first time that he’s not wearing the red contact lenses tonight.

“Hal,” he says, trying to use words that come from him and not what he wants to happen, “do you--I mean, what do you want to do?  I’m not sure I even want to model anymore, so...did you even want to be my photographer?”

“Maybe,” says Hal.  Well...maybe it’s not the kind of question you can answer all at once.  Dirk breathes out through his nose, feeling more tired by the second.

“It’s...it’s okay.  Horses are good.  You’re fine.  Be whoever you want to be, Li’l Hal, but I’m going to try and be someone else.  I’m sick of myself.”

“You said that,” says Hal, his eyelids fluttering oddly for a moment.  Dirk looks away from him, suddenly uncomfortable again.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, and turns towards the door.  “Why don’t we go in?  I can make ramen or mac’n’cheese or some shit like that.”

\--

He doesn’t break up with Jake, not at first.  He hears about the fight with Jane, and considers calling Roxy about it, but Roxy hasn’t called him since their last conversation and now that he’s actually started thinking about the things he says and the things he’s said...Dirk isn’t sure now how to apologize, or even what to apologize for exactly.

Then, one night, it all comes to a head.

Later, after some explanation and piecing together events, Dirk comes to understand it like this:

For a while, Jane and Roxy had been friends with a pair of twins in a bit of a rough household, one of whom sent Jane a bag of something--shrooms or truffles, apparently--in a misguided attempt to help her relax.  And some shitty circumstances--she doesn’t explain it very clearly later, and he doesn’t try to pry--lead her to impulsively enter her first experience with drugs instead of returning them to her friend.

Then Jane called Jake to tell him all about her massive crush on him, and he visited her house out of concern, and somehow she convinced him to get high and Roxy...well, once they’d got her to come over it’s not surprising she caved.  She’d been through a lot and Mom never really took the time to enforce the “do as I say, not as I do” kind of rules that most parents do.  Dirk wouldn’t be surprised if she saw them lying there out of their heads on psychedelic shit and just gave up.

It’s essentially what he does, though only after yelling himself hoarse at all of them and breaking up with Jake in the worst possible circumstances.

Jane’s the first to wake up, the rest of them start coming to their senses after she starts crying.  Roxy holds on to her and pets her hair while she sobs that she has to tell her dad but it’ll ruin everything and she doesn’t know what to do and she has to apologize to all of them.  Dirk, who through his headache can still faintly remember his pledge to be a different person, tries to articulate that it’s actually mostly his fault, and then Jake starts going on about how he doesn’t know how to communicate with people and he didn’t handle anything the way he should have.

Eventually, they all end up lying around Roxy, crying a little while she tells them that it was really just one big clusterfuck and there was no helping it.

Jane does tell her dad eventually, and as usual Mister Crocker handles it with no small amount of compassion--for all of them, in fact.  But he’s not pleased, either.  Dirk’s surprised at how hard that hits him; he’s always respected Bro to an extent, but the guy never bothered to show much encouragement or disappointment either way.  Fatherly disapproval from Mister Crocker is like a very gentle punch to the gut.

He doesn’t tell the school about any of them, but he does call their parents, and from what Roxy says, Mom might be considering making changes to her laissez-faire policy.  Well, good.  About fucking time.

Bro doesn’t do or say anything about it.  For the first time, Dirk’s cognisant that it’s up to him to set a decent example.

He writes Jake an apology email--he doesn’t trust himself to say it out loud.  It states unequivocally and without excuses what he did wrong, with bullet points and everything.  It turns out even longer than expected and ends with a straightforward apology and the reassurance that Jake need not reply (he doesn’t).  After some thought, Dirk also includes a note that he will be taking more care to show his brother how a decent human being acts and one day Hal will hopefully send an apology of his own.

That said, when it comes to Hal, there doesn’t seem to be so much to worry about.  He’s started taking photos of horses instead of people, much to the dismay of some of his regulars.  But he’s enjoying himself, so screw them.  There’s a stable on the outskirts of town and the owners are more than willing to let him give them a little more publicity so long as he doesn’t surprise their animals with the flash, et cetera.

As the weeks go on, though, more often than not the photos are of the guy who works there.  He’s in Dirk’s year but Dirk’s never really bothered to get to know him because he’s the big sweaty king of the wrestling team.  It’s kind of weird to see pictures of him with his shoulder-length black hair tied back into a ponytail, letting horses nuzzle his face and looking happy instead of angry.

Dirk feels weirdly privileged to be Hal’s confidant when it comes to this new “friend”, no matter how many times he has to hear his little brother talk about how great the guy’s muscles are.  He’s starting to get the faint impression that Hal likes boys as much as he does--possibly among other kinds of people, but only time will tell.

A couple weeks after the whole drug debacle, they all end up eating together again.  Roxy plans it, inviting each of them individually.  She doesn’t mention in any of her messages that the rest of the group will be there, but none of them seem surprised to see the others.  They head inside the restaurant in silence, order without much more than small talk while waiting in the queue, and sit down all together at the usual booth.

After a while, Jane says, “Would you guys like to see a movie together this weekend?”

Jake looks instantly excited.  “Have you seen the trailers for Children of Babel?  I thought it looked totally stellar!”

Dirk rolls his eyes.  “Are you kidding me?  It seemed contrived and corny to me--how many times is love going to save post-apocalyptic America?”

The tense silence only stretches on for a couple seconds, but for that brief span of time Dirk becomes hyper-aware of Jake’s expression and everyone else’s nervous faces.  He bites into a french fry and raises his eyebrows at Jake.

“...Oh, is that so?  Well, I won’t be convinced just by your gratuitous cynicism!  We’ll all go to see it and I won’t hear a word against it until then, Strider!”

There seems to be some kind of group exhale--if not from anyone’s lungs than from the very air around the table--and then Roxy dives in to defend the movie in question while Jane plays Dirk’s advocate.  The debate continues well into the evening, even after all the food has been consumed and all possible angles have been covered.

Dirk has never been so happy to hear someone argue with him.  It’s not the kind of second chance he deserves, but he’s prepared to accept it in the full realization that there shouldn’t be a third.  That night, he calls Dave and they just rap for two hours straight, until Dirk’s throat is sore and he’s shouting practically nonsensical verses into the phone.  The battle ends when Dave tries to rhyme “ventriloquistic” with “and still a biscuit” and they both start laughing uncontrollably.

This is probably as good as it gets right now, Dirk thinks.  And he’s surprised to find that he’s basically okay with that.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't tag the Halquius because I wanted it to be a surprise. I hope you can all forgive me.


End file.
